Business success in home care and hospice is about evolving in ways that will improve finances and continue to create positive changes for patients, and the groundwork for a successful future will require nothing short of total transformation. Robert J. Simione, Managing Principal, Simione Healthcare Consultants, maintains that the rising waves of regulation and accountable care initiatives present a golden opportunity to grow health care at home if organizations are willing to collaborate in the formative stages to build a more organized system of care. Last week, Simione delivered the keynote address, "Critical Success Factors for Home Care & Hospice", at the Executive Summit of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Association for Home & Hospice Care of North Carolina in Raleigh-Durham, NC.

"The time to get involved in collaborative strategic initiatives is now, and home care and hospice providers need to do this urgently," says the 35-year finance and operations veteran in home care and hospice. "Providers, physicians and administrative leaders in nearly every U.S. market are gathering to develop partnerships and programs around a shared commitment to quality, cost and improving the patient experience across the care continuum."

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New Staffing Benchmarks, Leadership Advisory Group Work to Support Agency Bottom Lines

The Simione Financial Monitor, an automated benchmarking tool that is transforming financial performance for home health and hospice agencies, has added real-time administrative staffing benchmarks to its analysis and reporting capabilities. Through the collaboration of a team of Simione Financial Monitor's Leadership Advisory Group, this proven industry resource now has greater capability to drive business results and improve cost management decisions in an industry facing escalating reimbursement challenges.

"Demand for home health and hospice care is high, yet reimbursement streams are threatened by many changes in regulation, payment systems and greater demand for quality outcomes," explains Rob Simione, Vice President of the Simione Financial Monitor. "With home health rebasing and changes in the hospice payment model, it is vital for agencies to be as efficient as possible and to have the right information available to make sound decisions about how to streamline their operations."

Cost Efficiencies and "The Rise of the Machines"

For those familiar with the second half of this title, it's the third installment in the Terminator movie series. Mark Tsiames, CPA, CVA, Principal, Simione Healthcare Consultants, notes its high relevance in the home care and hospice industry, when we apply it to the rise of technology in caring for patients. In particular, telehealth is helping agencies better position themselves as the industry continues to be rattled by Medicare payment reductions for the next number of years.

When Tsiames looks back at his first introduction to telehealth in the mid-1990s at the National Association for Home Care and Hospice (NAHC) conference, he remembers the prototype telehealth unit, which was referred to as HANC (Home Assisted Nursing Care[1]). "During the demonstration, I was awed by the technology. Today, I smile when we think of that prototype, which was basically a twenty-one-inch tube television set mounted on a wheeled cart. The device reminded me of a first-generation video machine with many wires attached," Tsiames says.